Video Portrait of the Dolphin Dance Project for Focus Forward Films

January 19, 2013

The Dolphin Dance Project believes that one of the most powerful ways to transform how our global civilization relates to its natural environment and treats the other creatures with whom we share the planet is to challenge the common assumption that we are separate from the rest of nature. Furthermore, we believe that the unique experience of mutual understanding and creative collaboration with wild dolphins that we offer through our films is a particularly compelling and innovative catalyst.

For this reason, we recently submitted a brief documentary profile of our work to the Focus Forward film competition, a Vimeo-sponsored initiative to promote the people and ideas that promise a “quantum leap to human progress through innovation”.

“All of a sudden, you realize there are these persons in the ocean.” Founder and choreographer Chisa Hidaka describes how amazing it is that wild dolphins are able to collaborate in these improvised dances, conversing with us through movement and showing us their tremendous intellectual capacities, curiosity, and generosity. She also explains that just by watching, the audience is able to experience a profound moment of intimacy and mutual understanding with another species. As one student relates, after attending one of our lecture presentations, “our traditional perceptions of the dolphin-human divide are just completely … gone.”

Although the film was not selected as a finalist, and will not be one of the films that is being screened this week at the Sundance Film Festival, we are confident that this work is “making a difference to help sow the seeds for a brighter tomorrow.”